


Kintsukuroi

by aurumdalseni (kyo_chan)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Conflict Resolution, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Post-Canon, Resolution, it's gen but it could be Rodansey if you try, look I can't get through Dream Thieves, so here's my solution to that, without wanting to hug everyone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:01:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26082343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyo_chan/pseuds/aurumdalseni
Summary: Broken things are never the same when you put them back together. Gansey himself has been broken and put back together more times than he can count. As significantly as dying and living again, all the way to a careless word causing the tiniest fracture.Or, the fix-it where Ronan keeps the real Pig after the wreck in Dream Thieves and wants to make things right.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20
Collections: Gansey Week 2020





	Kintsukuroi

**Author's Note:**

> Pour one out for the first day of [Gansey week](https://ganseyweek.tumblr.com/)! I'm super excited to be a part of this event, and present to you the first in a week full of Gansey love. The themes for day 1 are "The Pig/Yearning/High on Life". I tried to incorporate all 3 of them, which doesn't always work, but today it did. Hope you enjoy!

Adam added another haphazard building to his mental map of the Barns as he and Ronan approached it. Next to him, Ronan embodied a nervous energy, the same he’d worn when they’d all gone to bury his night horror. Lynch was a six foot shadow of dreams, mistakes and, what Adam had learned, the intense need to make right what had gone wrong. He wondered what was inside this Barn that stirred all those feelings to the surface, and it looked as though he was about to be shown.

Ronan gave no preamble, no warning of what it could be, and Adam braced himself while Ronan moved the bar across the doors. He shivered, not only from the chill November air, but his own nerves tensing at the base of his neck. The doors creaked and groaned on their half-rusted hinges, spilling dwindling afternoon light inside the barn like a living path. First he saw only dirt and scattered straw. Adam could make out dusty tire tracks in a pattern his mind immediately registered as familiar. And then…

Orange.

Bright, furious orange.

Adam blinked, stepping over the threshold. He blinked again, and his chest hurt.

They’d seen Gansey, Blue and Henry off on their gap year road trip. The same bright orange Camaro growling down the driveway and disappearing past the trees. A bright orange  _ dreamt _ Camaro. Adam’s mind rearranged itself to take in this new information, almost immediately wanting to reject the idea that this was the Pig. Not the one Gansey had been driving for a year, Ronan’s perfect copy of his beloved car, but the real thing.

Ronan saying almost too quietly to be heard, “I fucked up,” is what made it stick.

“Can you give me more light?”

Looking at him with an expression too painful to be given words, Ronan jerked his chin toward the inside of the Barn and whistled a tune. Three short notes, and immediately after, little glowing lights flickered to life like fireflies, illuminating the lofty interior, the tired wooden beams, and the Pig. As Adam stepped closer, all the lights chased the shadows away, turning the space into daytime, and just as comfortably warm. Spring instead of impatient winter. He circled the car, reactions tangling up inside of him, sticking to his ribs and choking up his throat. The car sat lopsided, leaning on the passenger side, which Adam discovered had been the focal point of the damage. He shook his head to clear the memory of Ronan’s in the front passenger seat, the violent collapse of metal superimposing itself over him. He felt an anguish specific to Gansey that didn’t entirely belong to him. The front wheel was missing from the frame, but Adam spotted it propped up nearby. Black spots spattered across the top of the windshield. It was a crime scene.

“Jesus, Lynch…”

“Can you fix it?”

The longing in Ronan’s voice came over Adam like a physical punch. And with it came the understanding that, at the same time Ronan had gone out and destroyed Gansey’s car, Adam had treated Gansey the worst he ever had in their entire friendship. They’d both deliberately sought to take something from him. Tangentially, Adam knew Ronan had wrecked the car while they were in DC, but he hadn’t been able to reconcile it in actuality, nor had he really understood the magnitude of it until this moment. In both cases, Gansey could have lost Ronan and Adam. In both cases, they’d hurt him. Adam understood this yearning to make it right because he shared it.

He ran a hand through his hair, blowing out the breath he’d been holding in a whooshing sigh. “This isn’t an oil change or an alternator, Ronan. I—”

“Can. You. Fix. It.”  _ Can we fix it together? Can I help you do it? I want to do this for him. _

Adam closed his eyes, and in the darkness, he remembered the Pig whole. How it ran, how it smelled, how it embodied Gansey to a degree even his physical form couldn’t hold. Ronan had outdone himself with the dreamt copy, but it was not  _ this _ . He opened his eyes again, looked at the Pig, with the mangled dash, Gansey’s epipen still wedged helplessly between door’s armrest and the center console. Then he looked at Ronan.

“We’re going to find out.”

-

Broken things are never the same when you put them back together. Gansey himself has been broken and put back together more times than he can count. As significantly as dying and living again, all the way to a careless word causing the tiniest fracture. People and things he loves have been smashed to pieces and reformed, and of all the ways he’s learned to heal from it, he likes celebrating the most. He’s always said, leave a place better than when you found it. There’s a joy in knowing that, while something may never be the same, it has a story to tell of what it’s been through.

When he steps into a barn he’s never been to before and sees the Pig sitting under Ronan’s dreamt lights, he somehow knows that the car itself is not one of those dreams. He presses his hands to the cool metal, lays his cheek on the roof. He circles his beloved beast until he can see where some terrible damage has been stitched whole again. He can feel the acts of love in every repainted panel, in the gasoline soaked smell of newer vinyl on the dashboard. Ronan won’t look at him as he opens the driver’s side door, but Adam’s gaze practically burns into him. The barn doors are thrown wide open, and Gansey feels his heart race with the thought of driving his car straight through them, back to the road. Not so that he could leave the dreamer and magician he loves again, but so that he knows he can return to them.

The real keys had worked in the dream Camaro, both his and Blue’s, but they belong to this car. He slides into the seat, breathing in with the rightness of how it cradles him, how it’s somehow too hot even under the cover of the barn roof. He pushes the key in, and starts it.

Gansey’s whoop of delight is almost drowned out by the roar of the engine, but not quite. He sits just as he is, leaning back and closing his eyes to just feel the joy. The joy of this thing that Adam and Ronan had done for him, something taken from him returned, an apology from them when Gansey had already offered forgiveness. The Pig isn’t the same as it was when he lost it, but he doesn’t love it any less. They’ve all changed since becoming friends, since falling a little in love with each other. Gansey brims with that love now.

He jerks forward suddenly, rolling down the window and slinging his arm over it casually.

“Don’t just stand there, get in. We have many more trees to hear and kings to find. Don’t worry, Parrish, I’ll have you home in time for fall quarter.” He winks at them, watches their wary fear turn into the smiles he’s grown to cherish.

They get in the car.

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found yelling about Gansey and TRC at my [TRC blog](http://oldkingyounggod.tumblr.com) or my [spicy TRC blog](http://athoughtfulking.tumblr.com). Please come say hello, if you like. Thank you for reading! <3


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